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Intense Cut And Run Turkey Hunting (Episode 287 Transcript)

This is the video transcript. To watch the video for this episode click here.

GRANT: Heath and Lindsey Martin share a couple more great turkey hunts with us and Adam and I want to give you some tips, how to make your clover food plots even more productive and attractive to deer.

GRANT: As we’ve seen this season, some turkey hunts go down really fast.

RALEIGH: (Whispering) Come on turkey, stop.

GRANT: You nailed him.

RALEIGH: That’ll wake you up.

GRANT: That was poopy footage, but it was a great hunt. (Laughter)

GRANT: Then there’s the hunts that take more time to unfold.

GRANT: (Whispering) (Inaudible)

GRANT: Fast, or slow, Heath and Lindsey Martin have had both types of hunts this year, like this hunt in Oklahoma. They made a few calls and a hen shows up.

GRANT: Made a couple of more calls, and here comes a nice Oklahoma gobbler.

HEATH: (Whispering) (Inaudible) You on him?

HEATH: (Whispering) You on him?

HEATH: Boo – yeah.

HEATH: Here’s my first Oklahoma long beard in, probably, 15 years. I grew up in southeast Oklahoma and hadn’t got to hunt here in, in, probably, 15 years. And first day to hunt Oklahoma in 15 years, long beard on the ground.

GRANT: Heath waited 15 years for that bird and we got to see it all in 30 seconds.

GRANT: We’ve seen it can be easy and fast for Heath and Lindsey, but that’s not usually how it goes.

GRANT: Back in Arkansas, where it rained more than five inches at their farm, Heath and Lindsey need a tractor to get up the mountain to their favorite turkey hunting spot.

GRANT: Once there, Heath uses his Hook’s Hoot’n Stick to see if he can locate a tom.

GRANT: This might be another fast hunt, as a gobbler fires up just about over Heath’s head. With limited options, they setup right where they were.

GRANT: Remember how fast our hunt went down in Oklahoma? Well, this is how it normally happens.

HEATH: (Whispering) I see him coming, baby, to my left.

LINDSEY: (Whispering) Where?

HEATH: (Whispering) Just way left. Just here, baby.

HEATH: (Whispering) You see him, yet?

LINDSEY: (Whispering) Hmm. Hmm.

HEATH: (Whispering) Huh? Can you see him now?

HEATH: (Whispering) Now?

HEATH: (Whispering) Can you see this one right here?

HEATH: (Whispering) Now?

GRANT: Heath and Lindsey were in a typical run and gun situation where the hunter might see the bird, but the camera is just far enough away it can’t pick it up.

GRANT: Here’s another intense moment, as a bunch of jakes discovered a Miss Purr-fect decoy.

GRANT: Looks like Miss Purr-fect may be in some trouble.

GRANT: This may not end well for the decoy.

HEATH: Well, they didn’t tear it up.

GRANT: Now, they’re back on the gobblers. Heath and Lindsey have been moving down the mountain, to stay at the same elevation as the toms.

GRANT: On the way down the mountain, they tried several different setups to get the toms to come in.

GRANT: Heath figured these birds were so wet from all the rain, they were looking for a sunny spot to dry out their feathers.

GRANT: Finally, one of the soaked toms was headed toward their call.

HEATH: (Whispering) (Inaudible) …to kill him right there.

GRANT: It could be Heath’s calling or that nice patch of sunshine where the tom wants to dry out his feathers, but either way, once he got in range and saw the Miss Purr-fect decoy, that tom certainly fell in love.

GRANT: You can see this tom’s tail is still wet from the heavy rains.

GRANT: Congratulations to Heath and Lindsey for showing us the fast and slow side of turkey hunting.

GRANT: Turkey season is closed in Missouri and we’re already focusing on improving the habitat and hunting stands for this fall.

GRANT: If you have watched GrowingDeer.tv very long, you know we do a lot of hunting around our hidey hole food plots.

GRANT: No matter what you’ve got planted in your food plots, it will taste better if it’s healthier and the key to forage health is having plenty of nutrients. In our smaller hidey hole food plots, we need a crop that won’t be over browsed easily, as a lot of deer could use that food source.

GRANT: We typically use clover. Clover can take a lot of browse pressure without suffering and it’s very shade tolerant. Through the years, I’ve learned that one of the primary killers of a good clover stand is a lack of nutrients – lack of fertilizer. In these small hidey hole food plots, we’re gonna use a few bags of Antler Dirt – see if we can’t boost some nutrition, hold a bit more moisture, and make sure it’s looking good this fall.

GRANT: As we head into the summer, and most likely, drier days and higher temperatures, we want to give it a boost now, during good growing conditions, to make sure it’ll be healthy this fall.

ADAM: As soybean farmers, we’re always looking for affordable ways to increase the amount of yield on our food plots. Well, a very easy way to do that is by using a soybean inoculant.

ADAM: There’s been a lot of research supporting that the use of inoculant leads to higher yields. So once we load up our soybeans in the drill, we’re gonna add a little inoculant and get back to plantin’.

ADAM: We had, roughly, five inches of rain over this past weekend, and there’s more rain predicted over the next week, so with this gap in the rain, we’re gonna try and get all our soybeans in the ground. We’ve got antlers growing and pregnant does getting ready to start dropping fawns. So as soon as these beans germinate, we’re gonna have some high quality forage for the deer herd.

ADAM: What’s left over from our Eagle Seed Broadside cover crop is some wheat and brassicas. This is gonna serve as a slow release fertilizer for our food plots.

ADAM: As these plants germinated and started growing through the fall, winter, and spring, they’ve constantly been mining nutrients deep into the soil, bringing it up into the roots and into the plant. Now that we’ve killed it off and it’s breaking down, those nutrients are gonna be transferred back into the soil, so those young soybeans, once they germinate, they’re gonna have easy access to those minerals.

GRANT: Loving all this vegetation here. The hard rain is gonna, you know keep it from causing any erosion, keep it from packing the soil, hitting this stuff, bounce off. Love it.

ADAM: We farm and plant about 65.

UNKNOWN: You planted 65?

ADAM: Yeah. We’ve got a variety of things, like right here is clover and wheat.

UNKNOWN: I was just gonna say…

ADAM: This is gonna be, uh, soybeans right here.

GRANT: Last week, Adam and I were blessed to have an opportunity to share what we do here at The Proving Grounds with the freshman class of School of the Ozarks.

GRANT: And those plants now become such that when you spray Roundup over the top – the chemical being glyphosate – it doesn’t impact that plant, but it kills the weed. There’s no way possible that we could feed seven billion people with old weedy fields. Do I like herbicides? No. Do I like to eat? Yes.

GRANT: There are thousands of bacteria in your hand right now, most of ‘em healthy. You know your body’s covered with about 20,000 different families of bacteria, and about 90% percent of ‘em, if you didn’t have on you, you would die rapidly.

GRANT: It’s one thing to lead a field trip through the property and the students get out and write down a few notes. But it’s another thing when they’re engaged with questions and comments, and I know everyone’s learning.

GRANT: Go ahead.

STUDENT: Capillary action?

GRANT: That’s it, exactly. Yeah.

GRANT: They had learned this year about early succession, so we were able to look at different stages of successional forage, here at The Proving Grounds.

GRANT: And from that, underneath here is the same. This massive seed bank that had been laying in there for decades erupted, and new life come to play. When we identified a 176 species of native grasses and forbs. That’s rainforest diversity. That’s incredible, and that’s what the Ozark’s used to be, so…(Fades Out)

GRANT: They spent most of a year in a classroom learning about early plant succession, survival of the fittest, and other very important biological principals.

GRANT: I, I really want you to think, now. I don’t – I don’t – I want you, as a class, to come up with the right answer. What would be an advantage? I want you to look out here at this clover, and I’m only gonna give you one hint: life. That’s your hint. What’s an advantage to not mowing that clover? Your only hint is life. Work it out.

STUDENT: (Inaudible)

GRANT: Okay. What’s another? That’s great. What’s another term?

STUDENTS: Natural selection.

GRANT: Natural selection. So in every square foot of this clover field, the micro environment is slightly different. The plants that are thriving right here, over time, obviously, are selected for that site. The plants that are surviving up there, probably, are genetically slightly different. We have natural selection at it’s finest.

GRANT: I hope you have a chance to get out and learn something new about Creation, this week, but every day, make it a priority to be quiet and listen to what the Creator is teaching you. Thanks for watching GrowingDeer.tv.

ADAM: And deep in the soil, with the big – I went off rogue right there. (Laughter) All right.

ADAM: Some of you may have concerns that there’s too much vegetat – vegetation.